YouTube & COPPA

[Steel Sponge]

I just wanted to say this first thing before I explain what this topic is about: I'm all for issuing laws in protecting children, even online. It's important that the identity of every child on the internet is secured. YouTube has faced controversy for in which the website had been collecting data from children and for the inappropriate content that the young viewers have been exposed to on there, and the criticisms are well deserved. COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, is built on protecting children under 13 online, and the law had been enacted since 2000. For those who aren't aware, the FCT has been going after YouTube, fining them $170m for not complying with COPPA. Now, just recently, YouTube has been starting to push brand new policies in order to comply with COPPA. These policies will be in effect by the very start of 2020, and they involve content creators having to label their entire channel or individual videos as "for kids" or "not for kids."

It may not seem like a big deal at first until you dive deeper into how these policies will work. Marking your videos as "for kids" will result into them having the comments turned off, notifications for it being invisible, being unsearchable, and making 90% less revenue. And as far as I'm concerned, marking videos as "not for kids" will not provide as much monetary value either. And what if content creators were to not comply with these policies from COPPA and mislead their audiences? They will be fined for at least $42,000. Per video. These policies are very aggressive, which is why this is such a big deal. Sadly enough, most people are only now talking about this and this imminent issue is still relatively niche to others. This will damage content creators, but most importantly, it will very likely damage YouTube as a whole. Perhaps it won't kill YouTube per se, but still, it's going to very much change the platform in a dramatic fashion.

Say what you will about YouTube's laundry list of problems that they've had over the years, but you can't completely pin the blame on them for having to comply. The FTC is also the enemy of this situation and their reasonings for pushing these new policies are pretty misguided from what I've seen. They paint YouTube as if it's a children's platform. It's not. Children do watch videos on YouTube, but YouTube's audience is a lot broader than that. They pin the blame on the platform entirely for this issue, which I get, but it feels a lot like they're glossing over the thought that parents should normally be responsible for monitoring what the children do or see on the internet.

I could go on about this, but at this point, I would just recommend watching what is by far the most popular video on the platform that addresses the issue, which is from Chadtronic:

To lighten things up a little, you can leave a comment on regulations.gov to try and get the FTC to reconsider these aggressive new rules. Like Chadtronic, I'd advise to BE MATURE with your comments. Let them know that these regulations that they're pushing over to YouTube is damaging to YouTube, it's damaging for content creators, and that there should be less aggressive ways for YouTube to comply with COPPA's policies:

https://www.regulations.gov/comment?D=FTC-2019-0054-0001

[Steel Sponge]

So today is the day that these new rules have come into effect and so I think now is a good time to lay in something that we all need out of this: clarity. YouTube, and in extension to the FTC, have cleared some things out. Videos at risk of being fined will only be towards those labeled "made for kids" if they infringe it. The fine won't extend to every other video for a creator's channel, rather just for any other video that infringes the "made for kids" label. The FTC had said that are certain factors that can rule out a video from having the "made for kids" label even while it contains video game/animated/etc. content aimed at kids. So I believe marking videos "not made for kids" won't do too much damage, but of course, the guidelines when it comes to videos aimed mainly for kids is still going to hurt creators of the like, which is not fine.

For those who are angry with the FTC issuing these rules for YouTube to comply, keep one thing in mind: this wouldn't have happened if YouTube, in the past, hadn't violated some of COPPA's rules, through having collected data from children and being too slow to do anything about other issues that plagued it like Elsagate, so I can't help but feel apathetic towards YT. Things are definitely going to be different for YouTube. This situation may even hurt it some. However, I wouldn't say that this is looking as bad as it did a couple months back. I can see people still getting mad about this, since this major change in YouTube's guidelines is doing little to help with monetization and benefit content creators built on child-focused content, but just so you know, copying-pasting "We're content creators, not babysitters" is not going to help make matters better.